The Phantom Carriage

♦

Bio

Pyrrha is the collaboration of Minneapolis based musicians Jackie Beckey, Jonathan Kaiser, and Adam Wozniak. A core instrumentation of viola, cello, and bass might suggest classical tradition, but these are three players with more experience in rock clubs and art galleries than in traditional concert halls. Pyrrha explores a sonic spectrum from ethereal sensitivity to furious roars of amplified sound.

In their individual work with Brute Heart, Myrrh, Dark Dark Dark, and other bands, each member of the trio has honed an idiosyncratic creative voice and an unconventional style of playing that defies easy categorization.

Together, as Pyrrha, their sound moves fluidly between moods and musical genres in a way that is undeniably cinematic. In fact, writing music for cinema has been a prominent part of the group’s output. Being longtime friends and musical collaborators, Jonathan helped Jackie’s band Brute Heart when they were commissioned to score the classic silent film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari at Walker Art Center in 2012. Since then, the two worked as a duo to compose and perform live film scores to D.W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat at a former Poor Farm in Wisconsin, and Kaiser’s film Flat Land Speed at Empire Drive-In at the New York Hall of Science. Jonathan and Adam had already toured together in the band Dark Dark Dark and worked to score Fritz Lang’s Spies at the Walker in 2011. In 2015, Adam joined Pyrrha and the trio wrote an original score to the silent film The Phantom Carriage to perform at ASI and the Heights Theater.

Pyrrha’s recording of The Phantom Carriage is out now on cassette and digital, with a recording of their score to Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher coming soon.